Photos: 60 Years of Climbing Mount Everest

From The Denver Post

Nepal celebrated the 60th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest on Wednesday by honoring climbers who followed in the footsteps of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Nepalese officials offered flower garlands and scarfs to the climbers who took part in the ceremony. They were taken around Katmandu on horse-drawn carriages followed by hundreds of people who marched holding banners to mark the anniversary. Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953. Since then thousands of people have reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) peak. Tenzing Norgay died in Darjeeling, India, in 1986 at age 71. Hillary, who died of heart failure in 2008 at the age of 88, attended the golden jubilee celebration of the conquest in 2003.

Sherpa Tenzing Norgay stands on the summit of Mount Everest May 29, 1953 after he and climbing partner Edmund Hillary became the first people to reach the highest point on Earth. (AP Photo/Edmund Hillary, Royal Geographical Society)

British mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, both members of the Mount Everest expeditions in 1922 and 1924, are seen at base camp in Nepal. The pair was preparing to climb the peak of Mount Everest in June of 1924. It is the last image of the men before they disappeared on the mountain. (AP Photo/Str)

Explorers Sardar Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, left, and Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand drink tea outside a tent at camp. The pair conquered Mount Everest in 1953. Hillary and Norgay were part of the ninth British Expedition to Everest. (AP Photo/NZPA,Penguin Books, HO)

A photo taken on September 30, 2010 shows Mount Everest (C) from the window of a Druk Air aircraft during a flight from Bangkok to Paro. Everest is the world’s highest mountain above sea level at 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) high. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

See more than 40 pictures from this gallery featuring the history of climbing Everest here

Pictures of the Week: May 4, 2012

Pictures of the Week is a Denver Post Plog that gathers the strongest photojournalism from around the world. See the full set herePakistani Abla Zahir, 6, sits on the ground holding her brother Yaseen, 1, while waiting to receive a ration of rice during a donated food distribution at the Beri Iman, a shrine of famous Sufi Saint Beri Imam, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, May 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

People are silhouetted on the ‘OCBC Skyway’ linking the Supertrees, ranging from 25-50meters serving as vertical gardens in the nearly completed Gardens By The Bay just next to Singapore’s busy financial district on Monday April 30, 2012 in Singapore. This is part of the city-state’s efforts to bring and nurture greenery within the city and capture the essence of Singapore as a tropical city.(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Nepalese female devotees pull the chariot of Hindu deity Rato Machhendranath through a street in Lalitpur, Nepal, Friday, May 4, 2012. The chariot festival of Rato Machhendranath, regarded as the rain God, is one of the oldest and longest festivals celebrated in the Katmandu valley. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Activists from various trade unions affiliated to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) raise slogans during a rally to mark May Day in Katmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, May 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

Egyptian soldiers raise their batons at a protester during clashes outside the Ministry of Defense in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, May 4, 2012. Egyptian armed forces and protesters clashed in Cairo on Friday, with troops firing water cannons and tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones as they tried to march on the Defense Ministry, a flashpoint for a new cycle of violence only weeks ahead of presidential elections. (AP Photo/Ahmed Gomaa)

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Featured photojournalist: Navesh Chitrakar

Are photo-journalists becoming the best photographers? I look at the work of landscape, fashion, art or portrait photographers and rarely do I find the same engagement with the subject, the same commitment to the medium and the same impressive vision as I do when I see the work of the best photo-journalists in the world.

Just when technology in the form of digital imaging makes photo-journalism truly viable, images captured now can be on line or in a paper in half an hour we find that so many of the outlets for these photographers are turning to the use of any image.  Camera phone, crap compact, anything that can make an image held by people who have no understanding of photography and conveying a story will be used if the person was there. So our newspapers and other media outlets via tv and the web are full of images that have immediacy but little quality. To paraphrase Bob Geldorf; after 150 years of news photography, ‘is that it?’

Fortunately there are still some photographers, probably now self funded rather than employed by news organisations, who are still driven to bring us images that illuminate and amaze us. Navesh Chitrakar was born in Kathmandu in 1986, into a family of artists, photographers and journalists. After college, Navesh worked for the Himalayan Times, and two years ago joined Reuters. Here he captures the spirit of the Chhath and Tihar festivals in Nepal, which took place this week

These rather beautiful images by Navesh Chitrakar can be found in the Guardian, here is the link for all the images. You can enjoy three here

A vendor scoops vermilion powder used for worship during the Tihar festival Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

A Hindu devotee offers a banana to a cow during Tihar, when animals are worshipped Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

On the final day of the Chhath festival in Kathmandu, a worshipper waits for sunrise in order to offer prayers Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters